


Encore Une Fois

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [58]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Tenth Doctor Era, To Days To Come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 08:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8198687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: He might have known he would end up here.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Straightforward angst this time. The title’s French, and loosely translates (if I remember right) to “once again”.
> 
> It takes place at around about the same period as Rose being on the beach in the parallel world (the anniversary of the events at Canary Wharf), so it’s conceivable (seeing as he thinks he’s hallucinating her at one point) that the walls between the ’verses were particularly thin at the time and he actually did see her, but that’s a bit too timey-wimey for me.

He might have known he’d end up here.

He’d not checked the co-ordinates when he’d landed (a softer landing than usual, which seemed weird at the time but he’d ignored it) because today of all days he doesn’t much care what awaits him. A wind-swept and desolate beach, though, is very much not what he has in mind.

At least, not _this_ one.

The last time he saw this place was that day a year ago – was it as long ago as that? – when he’d sat here orbiting that supernova and wishing the impossible could be true. It had almost killed him to act his normal nonchalant self that day but, so much had he wanted her to have a happy last memory of him, he’d pasted a smile on his face and done it, anyway. Afterwards, he’d never wanted to see the place again, in any universe; he thought he’d made sure he’d deleted any co-ordinates that would ever lead to him landing anywhere near a Norwegian beach.

_Obviously not, for here I am._

He’s glad, now, he’d made Martha spend a little time with her family; this is his own private agony, his time to wallow for a while in memories of Rose that are beyond precious. Memories, of his beloved girl, he doesn’t want to share with anybody.

A slight shiver goes through him although he isn’t feeling the cold. The humans have an expression for it: “someone walking over my grave”, Rose had called it. Only natural that her species, one that knew nothing of regeneration and thought their one life was all there could be, believes in ghosts; that way they can keep their loved ones with them even after death.

_And I should know._

He has a ghost himself, if he’s honest, that haunts his mind and hearts and even his TARDIS. The problem is that this “ghost” isn’t dead, or at least not in the literal sense. But for all the likelihood he’d ever see her again, she might as well be dead. The pain of that still skewers him in ways he’d never thought possible.

He walks along the beach, listening to the wind whistling past and the sand crunching beneath his feet, trying to think about something else. But it’s no use. He’ll never be free of her in any meaningful sense – and, even if he wants to be (which if he’s honest with himself, a rare occurrence these days, he doesn’t), he’ll never manage it here. He can feel the tears pricking the back of his eyes and he closes them, throwing his head back and walking straight into the wind. That way he can blame any moistness on the weather.

He won’t weep for her. He _won’t_. To do that is to give up all hope, and although he admits the likelihood he’ll ever see her again is beyond remote he can’t give up on her. He can’t do that to either of them.

Then the memory of her standing on a beach the mirror of this one resurfaces from where he’d buried it, deep in his mind, and again he watches her reach towards his face with her hand. He sees him stopping her, warning her that – although he looks real – he’s only an image; the idea of watching her hand sliding through the air instead of down his face washes over him again, as unbearable now as it was then, and he feels sick.

_The wind goes right through you on this beach. That’s why my eyes are watering so much. Nothing to do with tears at all._

And then, because he can’t stop himself from remembering, the image of her telling him she loves him resurfaces, too, and the strength of that memory is such that for a moment he almost thinks she’s standing right in front of him. The pain is vicious; he listens to her confirm what he’s always suspected, and he cannot act on it in any way. The pain’s in a different league to what he’d suffered over Gallifrey. Different in the quality of it, and exquisite in just how excruciating.

“I love you,” she says, this vision brought to him straight from his own hell doing her best to verbalise what the two of them are to each other because words are all she has.

“Quite right, too,” he says, and even at this distance, he can’t for the life of him figure out why that, why he didn’t swallow his pride and – just the once – give her what she needs. He’d known what she’d expected in return, he’d been just about to say it – expected or not, it didn’t make it any less true – when the connexion broke.

“Rose Tyler …” and he’d disappeared before he’d had the chance to finish.

_Will I ever forgive myself for that?_

And since he had still seen that beach, although the link wasn’t strong enough to project him through, he’d seen her composure disintegrate into tears. His inability to comfort her in any way hurts enough to scar him, a scar that lingers still.

The sob that shudders through him when the memory peters out shouldn’t be the surprise it is. He bottles everything up after all; refuses to deal with any of it because it hurts (and because, if – by necessity – you’re always looking forward, what’s the past but prologue?) He’s always moving forwards because he doesn’t dare go back, cannot bear to see the damage he leaves behind. But he can’t get away from this, not when it follows him everywhere he goes.

Another choking sob follows the first, and yet more follow in quick succession. His legs don’t seem to want to hold him up and he sinks to his knees on the sand; he stays there, buffeted by the wind, weeping inconsolably for what he had lost. She’d made him a whole person, had taught him to live again, after the mess he’d been in from Gallifrey’s destruction.

He weeps for all of that.

But, most of all, he weeps for the girl who stole his hearts – and, in leaving, took them both with her.


End file.
